2014 Nissan Versa Note SL — competitor in the small car field, but not at the top of the heap

“Noise, vibration and harshness” is a phrase that’s used a lot in the car business (it’s also the title of Jamie Kitman’s column in “Automobile” magazine, by the way.) NVH is something the auto makers would like to leech out of their products. Noise in a car is bad – it batters and tires the driver and it destroys conversation. Vibration means there might be something wrong with the car’s underpinnings – even if there isn’t, the driver might think there’s something wrong, which may be even worse. And harshness is the antithesis of smoothness, the quality we want in a car. Harshness means all those rubber cushioning devices and other smooth-making marvels of engineering are not doing their job.

Now we’ve just been driving the 2014 Nissan Versa Note SL, a diminutive econobox that occasionally manages to achieve some or all of the N, the V and the H. It’s not a great ride, even if it is kind of cute-looking.

For now, we’ll call it the Note and say from the outset that it seems as if Nissan, maker of such fine iron as the GT-R and the Maxima, phoned it in when it came to the Note. The SL Note, a five-door hatchback, is an upgraded version of the S and it starts life at $15,990. This is the kind of car you buy if you are young and are just starting out in that sometimes splenetic activity known as buying a new car, dealing with new car sales people, dealing with the dealers. Not a lot of fun. So you read up on the various cars, figuring you want something small, light, easy on gas, reliable and affordable; yet you also want comfort, a sprinkling of mod cons, and a noise level at cruising speed that will allow you to converse with the rest of your mates without shouting.

The problem with the Note, however, is that while it does all the things required of it, it does none of them very well. On the road, it wheezes its way up to cruising speed, its 1.6-liter 109-horsepower engine straining away through a continuously variable transmission. Yes, it will get up on the freeway and cruise at or above the speed limits, but it bounces around and lets you know that it would prefer slower speeds on surface streets. Back on those surface streets, it bounces harshly over speed bumps and other road imperfections that most cars would barely notice.

The SL Note we drove had options that tend to make the Note a car that would like to have standing, would like to be counted as a member of that tribe of all the other modern cars out there. There’s $1,700 for the “SL Package,” which gives you 16-inch alloy wheels (one inch bigger than the standard steel wheels), fog lights, heated front seats, rear view camera, upgraded stereo; for another $800, our Note’s “Technology Package” brought us navigation, “streaming audio via Bluetooth,” Pandora radio and heated side mirrors. With a few other odds and ends, the price for the car is $19,545. That’s a lot for a car like this.

We think of these cars as being in about the $14,000 range and, indeed, the stripper Note S is in that ballpark. But loading it up so it runs out the door for more than $20,000 (with tax and license) should beg the potential buyer to have a look elsewhere.

The first elsewhere I’d check out in the Note’s price range is Ford’s nifty Fiesta. I’d also look at the Honda Fit, Kia Rio and Toyota Yaris. An argument can even be made to look at used cars in good condition.

New car dealers need to move those cars they take in on trade-in and the lease returns. The dealers will usually keep the best ones for their own used-car lots (sorry…. pre-owned car lots) and get rid of the rest. If I had a choice between a new Nissan Versa Note – S or SL or S anything – I’d opt, instead, for a used low-mileage Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, Nissan Altima/Maxima, or any of a slew of other cars like that.

If you like the small cars, however, try the Fit or the Fiesta. Right off, you should see a difference.